By Lisandra Paraguassu
(Reuters) – President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has treated the trip to China as a special chapter in Brazil’s ambition to regain influence on the global stage and is likely to repeat directly to Xi Jinping his proposal to form a group of nations — Beijing included — that might help negotiate peace in Ukraine.
In the state visit – only the second granted by the Chinese since the end of the pandemic restrictions – Lula will meet not only with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, but with the prime minister, Li Qiang, in addition to being received in the People’s Congress of China, the local Congress.
The Brazilian arrives in the country just days after the Chinese representative visits Moscow. Lula will be the first head of state Xi will meet after his direct conversation with Vladimir Putin.
“We will naturally want to hear what Xi Jinping brings from Moscow. And we continue to believe that, despite being very difficult, we have to talk about peace,” Celso Amorim, special advisor to the presidency and main Lula’s adviser on foreign policy.
“It’s not an easy thing, but the alternative is for you to run the risk of having a new world war”, continued the ambassador. “It’s extremely dangerous for the world. Not to mention it’s obviously disastrous for the Ukrainian population, especially, but the Russian population there as well.”
Lula, who has already spoken with the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, offered to speak with Putin – with whom he lived in his first two terms – and talks about uniting countries like India and Turkey, as well as China, to try to open up a peace deal for war.
“President Lula will reiterate his disposition to help if there is a role for other countries. And I think in principle that there is”, he affirmed.
Amorim recalls that, recently, China managed to negotiate peace between Iran and Saudi Arabia, in a movement praised worldwide and considered almost impossible — a strong visiting card for the diplomacy of the Asian country, which is currently the only that it would have “capacity of persuasion” in relation to Russia.
Amorim said that the Chinese, owners of “millennial diplomacy”, know the ways, but “if they find it useful”, countries like Brazil or Turkey can help to legitimize, “to give a more unilateral character” to the talks.
At the moment, China is seeking to position itself as a mediator in the Ukraine crisis, but for the country at war, no peace agreement that does not restore all of its territory captured by the Russians is valid.
The United States says any ceasefire now would only secure Moscow’s gains and give the Russian army time to regroup.